Lackadaisy: Volume 1

Eisner Award Nomination, Best Graphic Album—Reprint 

"Dynamic art and nonstop mayhem purring along." — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Beautifully captures the visual style of the Jazz Age." — BOOKLIST

It's 1927 and Prohibition is in full effect. On the record, the nation is dry, but the glory days are at hand for an unassuming café on a quaint St. Louis side street. Beneath its tile floors is a subterranean saloon — the Lackadaisy Speakeasy, where the spirits are still high and available on tap. Or at least they were until calamity rocked the establishment's foundations. Now, some jazz band riffraff and a beleaguered veteran are all that remain to pick up the pieces of the past . . . along with some decent bootleg booze. If the Lackadaisy is to survive this and the advances of its ferocious rivals, a little bit of creative chaos might be in order.

Tracy Butler was born in 1980 in Springfield, Massachusetts. She studied biology for a year at Our Lady of the Elms College in Massachusetts, before returning to her art. She created a website with some of her work, which led to a job offer from Simutronics, a Missouri game development company. Butler performed illustration and graphic design work before moving into 3D character design and animation. After living in St. Louis for some time, she purchased a 100-year-old house and began researching its history, as well as that of the local neighborhood, and ultimately the history of St. Louis itself. Combined with her interest in jazz music and the characters she had designed in school, this led to her starting Lackadaisy in July 2006.